Imagine one day you find your self in a situation where all fingers are pointing at you. You’ve been accused, and even worst, there is proof that you’ve committed a felony. And no matter how much you try to convince people that you are innocent, that you haven’t done anything wrong, no one believes you. Now that you have this mental picture, hold it. Unfortunately this image is not made up. It has happened, and its still happening. Maybe not to you, but it’s happening to individuals who are seen as weak. Who are seen as inferior. People that are being blamed and harassed for things such as illegal possession of drugs in the United States. People who are classified by their colored skin. It isn't a coincidence that today the highest percentage of people who are behind bars are either black or brown colored skinned and the majority is convicted with a drug felony. In America’s society, the use of drugs and illegal substances has been an issue throughout …show more content…
Writer and activist, Michelle Alexander, in her inspiring speech on “The New Jim Crow Laws” talks about the War on Drugs and the politics behind it. She points out how “white use are more likely to engage illegal drug dealing than black use”. Unfortunately, that not how society would see it. And it is infuriating that whites get away with it so easily, while black-brown skinned people, many of them being innocent, are being accused unfairly and arrested with drug felonies. I say unfairly because it isn't fair to assume anything based on the way someone looks. Tim Wise, who is also an activist and very well known speaker, in his “Colorblind Society Speech” talks about the time he got to interact with police officers and asked them about their intuitions when it came to searching someone for drugs. Even they admitted that they relied it on their physical appearances, mainly race. As well as the type of car that the suspect drives and who drives
Equality is something that should be given to every human and not earned or be taken away. However, this idea does not present itself during the 1930’s in the southern states including Alabama. African Americans faced overwhelming challenges because of the thought of race superiority. Therefore, racism in the southern states towards African Americans made their lives tough to live because of disparity and inhumane actions towards this particular group of people.
Michelle Alexander in her book "The New Jim Crow" argues that Mass Incarceration is similar to Jim Crow; Alexander believes that caste systems such as Jim Crow and slavery are similar to the existing system of mass incarceration. In addition, Alexander accuses the U.S. criminal justice system, implying their laws undividedly target African Americans through the War on Drugs and racial limitation. In comparing mass incarceration with Jim Crow, Alexander points to compelling parallels regarding political disenfranchisement, legalized discrimination, and symbolic production of a race. Alexander, moreover, effectively offers a rebuttal to the counterargument that the New Jim Crow does not carry the same level of racial hostility as the Old Jim
Professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, writes that a racial caste system existing in America reflect the Jim Crow laws that were "separate but equal" from the time of the Civil War until the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the mid 1960's and which continue today. She is a graduate from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University and clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Subsequently, she was on the faculty of Sanford Law School serving as the Director of the Civil Rights Clinic before receiving a Soros Justice Fellowship and an appointment to the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Professor Alexander has litigated civil rights cases in private practice while associated with at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller law firm, with additional advocacy through the non-profit sector, as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a very poignant piece. Throughout the work Alexander makes it a point to draw parallels between the current judicial systems implementation of declarations coming out of the executive branch and the lack action from the legislative branch to correct the overbroad execution that has ultimately lead to a disproportionate amount of Blacks currently incarcerated. The book was interesting to say the least. I feel as if Alexander did a proper job of laying the historical foundation down for the reader and describing that from the earliest time in American history the Black people were invited into the land merely as a compromise and because the Blacks seemed to be the most economic choice for the furtherance of their motives to develop the country. Alexander did not merely stop at the idea of just telling the reader the Blacks were a better economic move during the foundation of the country instead she went into depth about why other racial groups, such as the Native Americans and the poor Eastern European Whites would not be as easy to assert slavery power over.
...system that has existed in the United States or anywhere else in the world” (Alexander 234). W.E.B. Dubois argued that “The burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs” (Alexander 217). Our nation must address this burden and correct that racial injustices created by our so-called criminal justice system. The criminal justice system cannot continue to hide behind the front of being a colorblind system - racial inequality and injustice must be challenged.
Danny Thiemann Mrs. Fleetwood English I-C 13 April 2014 Separate but not equal Does the name Jim Crow ring a bell? Neither singer nor actor, but actually the name for the Separate but Equal (Jim Crow) Laws of the 1900s. Separate but Equal Laws stated that businesses and public places had to have separate, but equal, facilities for minorities and Caucasian people. Unfortunately, they usually have different levels of maintenance or quality.
The targets of the drug war are certain racial groups just because they are of color, they are targets because the law enforcements have bias opinions about the people of color rather than those who are white.The people of color and whites are both as likely to use and sell drugs, but the people of color have a bigger probability to get arrested, searched, prosecuted, convicted or sent to jail for the violation of drug laws. The drug war isn't only about people of color, it is about every races including white. The enforcement does not look for the increasing of drug activity because But the law enforcement doesn’t focus on the high income neighborhoods in search for drugs, what they do is focus on the poor low income neighborhoods because that is where they think drugs are being abused. The drug policies are very discriminatory and attack those that are non white, or those who live in a neighborhood where everyone thinks drugs are abused there. According to the article “Race, Drugs, and Law Enforcement in the United States” it uses statistics from seattle that shows a clear example of the discrimination of the supposed war on drugs.“A recent study in Seattle is illustrative. Although the majority of those who shared, sold, or transferred serious drugs[17]in Seattle are white (indeed seventy percent of the general Seattle population is white), almost two-thirds (64.2%) of drug arrestees are black”(hrw.org 1). This quote shows what a study found in seattle, that the population in seattle is seventy percent but most of the people in jail are blacks. Seattle has a problem where cocaine and crack are the main drug being abused and sold, but the people who sell it the most is whites but the majority who end up in jail for cocaine or crack charges are african americans. Well this happens because black people do drugs but also white people, but the ones who are the victims of incarceration are
If someone is successful does not mean they didn’t have a hard time in their journey of being successful. That doesn’t mean the racial caste system doesn’t exist. Michelle Alexander argued in her book, “The New Jim Crow” that “the superlative nature of individual black achievement today is formerly white domains are a good indicator that old Jim Crow is dead, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the end of racial cast. In history is any guide, it many have simply taken a different form.” (21) I agree with Michelle Alexander that black individual who have nice nature are successful in white man’s world. It is good, but that doesn’t mean that black people are equal to white. One reason why I agree with Dr. Alexander, Jarvis Cotton was not allowed
When societies finally become comfortable with reality, they begin to abandon the murderous laws that impede their growth. Currently, the social stigma and legislated morality regarding the use of illicit drugs yield perhaps the most destructive effects on American society. Drug laws have led to a removal of non-violent citizens from society- either directly by incarceration or indirectly by death - that is genocidal in quantity and essence.
A “drug-free society” has never existed, and probably will never exist, regardless of the many drug laws in place. Over the past 100 years, the government has made numerous efforts to control access to certain drugs that are too dangerous or too likely to produce dependence. Many refer to the development of drug laws as a “war on drugs,” because of the vast growth of expenditures and wide range of drugs now controlled. The concept of a “war on drugs” reflects the perspective that some drugs are evil and war must be conducted against the substances
drugs may be illegal yet we still have one heck of a problem with them; thus,
Drug in the American Society is a book written by Eric Goode. This book, as the title indicates, is about drugs in the American Society. It is especially about the misuse of most drugs, licit or illicit, such us alcohol, marijuana and more. The author wrote this book to give an explanation of the use of different drugs. He wrote a first edition and decided to write this second edition due to critic and also as he mentioned in the preface “there are several reason for these changes. First, the reality of the drug scene has changed substantially in the past dozen or so years. Second much more information has been accumulated about drug use. And third, I’m not the same person I was in 1972.”(vii). The main idea of this book is to inform readers about drugs and their reality. In the book, Goode argued that the effect of a drug is dependent on the societal context in which it is taken. Thus, in one society a particular drug may be a depressant, and in another it may be a stimulant.
During the beginning of the civil rights movement, racial segregation was a growing issue in the southern United States of America. The Jim Crow laws were enacted in the 1880’s and their soul purpose was to enforce separation of the races. Jim Crow laws were a set of black codes, in which mocked black citizens of the Southern United States and enforced racism. “‘Jim Crow’ was a derisive slang term for a black man” (A Brief History of Jim Crow 1). These laws got their name from actor Thomas Dartmouth, who would impersonate and mock African Americans citizens and servants. Thomas, would paint himself black to appear African American, while this was very offensive it seemed to amuse the Caucasian population. The Jim Crow laws are an example of
The use of illegal drugs in the United States is considered by some to be the biggest problem in our society. Over 40% of high school seniors use some kind of illegal drug, and in a recent 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse showed that the three most common drugs are Marijuana used by 11,100,000 people, Cocaine used by 1,500,000 people, and inhalants that is used by 991,000 people nationwide.
Another problem is use of illegal drugs by teenagers and young adults. As usage of drugs such as ecstasy and marijuana become more popular on "underground" scenes, people seem to find it acceptable to engage in casual drug use. Many young people do not realize the harmful effects of these substances until it is too late. The lives of America's y...